Friday, November 8, 2013

Just What Exactly Is The Christian Calendar? Part I

We’re off on a journey through the Christian Calendar. Great! But what exactly IS the Christian Calendar? Come to think of it, what is a Calendar?

A Calendar is more than a calendar. That is, it’s more than just the passing of 365 days broken up into 12 months and 52 weeks, or days marked by the passing of moons.

A Calendar is a method of measuring one’s time, to be sure, but it also dictates how one passes one’s time. In many regions of the world, the Calendar is set up around harvesting crops. It dictates when preparation is to be done, when work is to be done, and when rest is to be taken. In the most agrarian communities, it also dictates when prayer to a deity or deities should be offered. A Calendar may include weekly and/or monthly rituals, as in the Jewish and Muslim Calendars, but they always include yearly rituals that are marked out in Seasons. It is the nature of a Calendar to dictate, to control.
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The Calendar that will be most familiar to Westerners is some form of the Academic Calendar. Particularly in the West, the Academic Calendar dictates the rhythm of our culture and society, not only on a micro-level (individuals, families, and small subcultures), but also on a macro-level (local communities, national culture, and international relations).

It is debatable about when the Academic Calendar begins: Is it at at Graduation when student begin a new chapter of their lives? Or is it actually the official beginning of classes? Either view makes sense.

In August, the year commences with the anticipation/excitement (or dread and horror!) of Back to School Days. That Season usually ends around Midterms and is replaced with a sort of quiet contentment as people settle into what has now become “comfortable”. This comfortable time lasts until Thanksgiving/Fall break, which signifies the beginning of a few weeks of exhaustion and a steadily increasing excitement for Christmas/Winter Break. Finals is a week of solemnity, filled with vigils (“all-nighters”) and repentance over past failings (pleas for extra credit, appeals of grades, or just the self-introspective question of “Why didn’t I study more?” and promises to do better next time). Christmas Break is a time of a freedom, rest, reconnection, and relief. Spring Semester almost always has an entirely different feel to it than Fall Semester. Autumn was filled with excitement whereas Spring is usually mundane. It can follow, to a much less intense degree, the same basic framework of Fall Semester, but almost in reverse. Spring Break is usually longer with a focus on activity and “doing” rather than connection and rest and is usually psychological preparation for the “real” break in the summer. The last half of the semester often brings “senioritis”, even if one is not a senior. AS the semester wears toward it’s end, students, teachers, and families are exhausted. School finally ends with a flurry of excitement; graduations are held; life is celebrated and good. This season is one of bitter-sweet change. We say good bye, but we’re also filled with the anticipation of Summer rest and activity. Summer Break is a season all its own in which we live life to the fullest without regard for the future or the past, only living fully in the present. We take joy in having no schedule, but as the season progresses, we become increasingly restless and yearn for structure and productivity to return. Or for peace and quiet if we are parents.

The Academic Calendar is also the way we in the West measure the growing and maturing of individuals into adults. Kindergarten transitions to Elementary School which then transitions to Jr. High School (the beginning of “adolescence”) and High School. In traditional Western culture and still in some areas, graduation from High School is considered the transition from dependent teenager into adult. In other areas, this is delayed till graduation from university.

The intensity with which one feels the Academic Calendar is entirely based on one’s station in life, yet no one in Western culture can avoid living the rhythm to some degree or other. It’s obvious that the Calendar dictates the finest details of teachers, school employees, and school aged children and their parents (everything from what type of clothes they wear to when they will wake up in the morning and go to sleep at night).

Yet even those who may no longer live each moment as dictated by the Academic Calendar are impacted by it. If you’re a retired, for example, it may not have the same binding power over your daily emotional state, but it may still dictate when you can see your grandkids, and it definitely still dictates when the best sales are at your favourite store. It may even dictate when you’re more likely to go out to eat or go to the mall.

The Academic Calendar is a fact of Western culture. This post is not in any way designed to be a “rage-against-the-machine” suggestion. I do not think that Calendar is particularly evil. While it has replaced the role that was originally held by the Christian Calendar, it was not intentionally designed to do so, nor do I think they have to be in conflict with each other (much of the Academic Calendar still retains some of the rhythms of the Christian Calendar).

It’s not a bad way to live one’s life, or for a culture to set its rhythm by. However, I find myself concerned, more and more, with the story it is telling, with the story it has told me over the past few years and is continuing to tell me. Just as the Christian Calendar re-tells the Story, I think the Academic Calendar can tell a different story. It’s a story that has taken grip in Western culture, and I’m not convinced it’s a good story.

As students, family of students, teachers, and citizens in a culture that values this Calendar above any other, I think we can become so absorbed in the Calendar that we don’t stop to question what it’s teaching us. One of my professors once said that the things we don’t realise are teaching us are precisely the ones that are teaching us the most. A Calendar is like the water a fish lives in: he doesn’t notice it (unless it’s particularly bad), but it brings both nutrients and toxins into his body.

I begin this journey with the assumption that the way in which one lives one’s life will impact one’s spirituality. This isn’t because of some deep mystical or magical influence; it’s because a Calendar sets the rhythm and flow of one’s life, and the way we live our lives both is informed by and shapes the story we believe.

The story we tell ourselves the most is the one we end up believing. And because we all tell ourselves different (even conflicting) stories all the time, we struggle to collect all of those pieces into one cohesive story. Words, whether in a Book or an well-prepared, theologically accurate sermon (or podcast), only go so far. Words and reason can impact parts of a person, but they cannot impact the parts of us that were designed to be impacted by relationships, or music, or visual art, or diet, or clothes, or rest, or the weather, or our health. Or Calendars.

3 comments:

  1. Hmm. "I begin this journey with the assumption that the way in which one lives one’s life will impact one’s spirituality." Possibly. By impact are you talking change? If so it is more likely the reverse is true. Or should be. Living in a certain way does not change who we are, who we are should change the way we live. Just like if I used English rather than American spelling, it wouldn't change the fact I'm an American no matter how much I might wish it to. Rather, the fact of who I am and where I was raised is much more likely to influence how I write. Now, if you mean it helps to focus our attention on areas that need it, that makes sense.

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  2. I love the parallels you suggest between the academic and Christian calendars. I'd never thought of seeing similarities in the seasons and rituals of the academic calendar. Good stuff! Keep it coming!

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  3. Thanks Billy. I actually hadn't planned this post... It popped out as I was trying to introduce the next. ;)

    Spiff - I'm hesitant to get into the "either/or" argument. What I mean is exemplified in the Proverb, "bad company corrupts good morals". A good man may choose to befriend evil fellows, but he won't stay a good man long. Likewise, a non-believing man may choose to expose himself to the Gospel and so, in time, be converted through the work of the Holy Spirit. One's decisions have consequences, and those consequences influence how we believe which then influence the choices we make. It's a loop. And I don't think there's any use talking of how it "shouldn't" be that way. It is that way, and since it seemed to be that way even before the Fall (Eve being influenced by the results of her own choices), I think it's probably the way God designed human psychology to operate in our physical and sociological worlds.

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